Another Way Apple's Fight With Google Is Hurting Users - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/another-way-apples-fight-with-google-is-hurting-users.php <comment><USER2> I see two fundamental issues at the heart of the problem:

* iOS allows users to install only applications approved by Apple. This makes about as much sense as a house with built-in technology that prevents the owner from using any furniture, kitchen equipment, and entertainment device that isn't pre-approved by the home builder.

* iOS prevents users from installing and accessing other app stores. (Other proprietary mobile OSs make it difficult or impossible to install third-party app stores.) This makes about as much sense as the home builder having the legal and technological power to prevent the homeowner from visiting certain shopping malls in the area.

Installing any app you want -- and any app store you want -- _on your own device_ ought to be an inalienable right.

\--

Edit: I updated the second point to reflect that Android does allow the installation of third party app stores -- see comments below. (Thank you mokeyfacebag, stanleydrew, and ZeroGravitas for pointing this out!)

<comment><USER3> > Both iOS and Android prevent users from installing and accessing other app > stores.

This is _not_ true for Android. Some OEMs might ship a version of Android that is tied to a single app store (e.g., Kindle Fire), but I'm quite certain that vanilla Android can install any old .apk from any source.

<comment><USER4> The carriers can threaten lawsuits to app providers if they allow the application to work on their network.

Case in point: Google Wallet.

<comment><USER5> From a European perspective, that sounds really strange.

I've got mobile broadband in my laptop. Imagine if the provider of that service would have a say over what programs I could run on my laptop. Very strange.

<comment><USER4> It's a SLA, which typically don't come with laptops.

Video game consoles are similar - MS won't allow you access to the Xbox Live service if you've modded your hardware or installed different firmware.

Verizon doesn't care what you do with your phone, but they say that you can't get their cell phone service unless you run the device the way they want you to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The actual title of this article is "Another Way Apple's Fight With Google Is Hurting Users", which casts less blame than the modified title here on HN, "Another Way Apple's Fight Against Google Is Hurting Users".

It is unfair to present this ongoing situation as a war on Google by Apple. It is a competition _between_ the two companies. Not to beat a long dead horse, but the war between the two companies started when Google entered the mobile device space.

<comment><USER7> It hurts Apple's customers because they are blocking a superior free product for no apparent reason but to kill competition.

As for: _Not to beat a long dead horse, but the war between the two companies started when Google entered the mobile device space._

Was entering the mobile market a bad thing? was it not allowed? is it for Apple alone and no one else's? that statement doesn't make any sense. I'm sure there was a time when Apple entered the mobile business and Nokia wasn't none too pleased.

<comment><USER8> >It hurts Apple's customers because they are blocking a superior free product for no apparent reason but to kill competition.

Misinformation. Apple isn't BLOCKING anything!

Apple released, in iOS1, Apple Maps powered by Google Maps API Data.

Google, wanting to monetize Google Maps API access, began charging expensive rates for their heavy users, of which Apple was the heaviest user of all.

In response to Google asking Apple for millions of dollars for a service they provide for free on every other platform, Apple decide to change the data source in Apple Maps.

Google has yet to provide their own app on iOS for mapping, as they're likely pissed that their million-dollar-lunch just ended and now they have to provide a service for FREE.

I'm so tired of this blatantly anti-Apple bias.

<comment><USER9> You do not know how much (if anything) Google was charging Apple for API access or if it increased when they generally increased the pricing. They almost certainly got a better deal than general users of the API because they are Apple and have a massive user base. We do know that Apple and Google had a contract in place but beyond that we don't know anything.

Furthermore, Apple does not get their data from "Apple Maps". They pay to license it from TomTom and other companies (though they do, of course, also produce data of their own that gets combined with the third-party sources to produce the aggregation that is Apple Maps).

I don't know how much you meant by "millions of dollars" but it was probably substantially less than the $267 million Apple paid to acquire C3 Technologies to add 3D maps to their offering.

Apple's decision was a great long term decision for them but it did hurt users in the short term (hence Cook's apology).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Much as I find anti-competitive behavior contemptible, this article makes a glaring, uncorroborated assumption that Google's voice-to-speech functionality is currently being held up by Apple.

Looking closer, it's not even clear that ReadWriteWeb asked either party for a comment... note: "Google's PR response to questions like this is that "we're working closely with Apple" on getting it released." and "Well, Apple doesn't talk about these things, so all we know is that it isn't out."

<comment><USER11> During the search breakfast back in early August, Google did say that they'd submitted the app. Here's a CNET article that covered the search breakfast: [http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57489395-93/google- exposes-...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57489395-93/google-exposes- smart-results-in-search/) The relevant part is "The update to the Google Search app has been submitted to Apple, and Google expects it to be approved in the next few days, Huffman said."

If anyone wants to watch Scott Huffman's demo of natural language voice search from the search breakfast, the relevant section of the video is on the web: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8a2VmxqFg8A#t=10m43s>

<comment><USER12> ...wow.

Gee whiz, I wonder why apple suddenly has a bitter taste towards apple? This makes siri look embarrassing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> You can look at this at least two ways:

1- Apple you S.O.B's, why won't you let me do as I wish with my phone

2- Apple, this is your product and I understand that you have the absolute right to do with it as you wish.

I actually find myself in both camps.

Sometimes I wish Apple would let go and treat this like selling Windows or OSX: They provide the OS and let others integrate apps as deep and wide as they wish. Yes, this would mean things like providing developers full access to all resources as opposed to the restrictions we work under today.

On the other hand, I also find myself in a position from which I respect the quality and stability the platform has offered since day one. It's almost like this is a benevolent totalitarian regime.

Until iOS 6 and Maps.

What I see now is a company that might not be making the right decisions for it's customers and users. You could argue this has happened with OSX as well. By releasing a substandard Maps application Apple has proven that it is now willing to make decisions that do not include quality, stability and the users' best interest in the process. I cannot, in any way, imagine that this would have been approved by Steve Jobs. Maybe I think too much of the man, but I don't think I am wrong.

Apple cannot make all the right decisions for this platform. No company can. Not in the long run. At one point you have to let go and allow others to help evolve the platform in ways a single company could not possibly imagine. Not doing so has the potential to tilt the scales and have users eventually vote with their purchases and move to other platforms.

<comment><USER14> This is exactly my issue with Apple. Once you've handed over all control to a benevolent dictator you're powerless if that dictator becomes less benevolent or competent in the future.

Until Apple allows opt-in sideloading of apps I'm done with iOS.

<comment><USER15> Except for the fact that Apple has NEVER been benevolent. My first brush with Apple was choosing to buy a Creative mp3 player (despite literally everyone I know having an iPod as their player) because of the absolutely ridiculous restrictions that Apple put on copying files from the device to a computer. This wasn't a "hacker" problem that "typical" users didn't face; I've lost count of the number of people who asked me how to do exactly that with their iPods over the following few years. I've always been baffled at the characterization of Apple as focused on the user; user satisfaction has always seemed like a side effect of their main goal, which is profitability. Obviously in the ideal case, these two goals should be one and the same, but it's pretty obvious that very, very often, they are not. There are always things a company can do to help their market position that hurt their users, and Apple is practically a pioneer in coming up with and implementing them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> _"I am a devoted Apple customer"_

Not only is this the reason the author percieves the situation as harmful, but avoiding the harm is entirely within the author's control. Just purchase different devices.

<comment><USER17> After all these years purchasing only iDevices, it can actually be pretty difficult for many of these people (particularly journalists) to even _envision_ purchasing and using a non-Apple device. They've just been drinking the Kool-aid for far too long.

<comment><USER18> Well, there are rational reasons, too. At this point people have spent five years building up a collection of apps- if you switch to Android, you lose the whole lot.

<comment><USER19> That really depends on how flexible you are as a user. Maybe you cannot get the exact stack of apps that you currently have, but I'm quite sure you can find the same kinds of functionality on both sides of the app store fences.

<comment><USER18> Sure. But you have to pay for all of them again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This clearly shows how laggard Siri is when compared to Google search. This is how things are at present. Google clearly has an edge in this area. I agree that Apple will keep working and improving Siri, but there are many problems in the road which Google can solve much better than Siri can.

When Apple doesn't allow Google search because it is competing with Siri(Ssshh.. actually, it's a lot better than Siri), I am losing as a user.

I wish both companies can work together. In an ideal world for users, the backend technology is powered by Google and the interface and interaction is designed by Apple. That will make a groundbreaking product for sure.

</comment><comment><USER21> You can't have it both ways: people absolutely _love_ to trot out the platitude "competition is good" about all sorts of situations--even when open source projects are rewritten from scratch when the other project would have happily accepted patches, people are still all "competition is good"--but now, suddenly, it is all about "cooperation"? Why isn't this another "competition is good"?

Apple is not playing unfairly here (as you might argue in other battles, such as with Samsung), and neither is Google. They are competitors, and both Maps and Voice/Siri are key functionality for these mobile devices: Google spent a bunch of time building their technologies, and if Apple wants to use it on their highly profitable hardware maybe they should have to pay a _lot_ for it; example: half their margin.

This is, then, what competition is: it is two people/companies duplicating effort to get a similar result, purposely putting each other down whenever possible, and setting up situations where they have whatever advantages the system allows over the other. The customer _often_ loses in these situations, because so much blood and sweat has to be lost to the "fight".

The alternative, "cooperation", normally is frowned on in these circles. Even in the aforementioned cases of open source projects, such as the with web browsers (where the cost is painful fragmentation caused by some vendors misunderstanding or not disliking specifications enough to not bother implementing them) or compilers (the gcc/clang split has been brutal: clang doesn't really compile things correctly, and yet is now the only compiler from Apple for Mac OS X), people are again all "competition is good, deal with it".

Well, sometimes, often, possibly always (yes, even for the restricted domain of "prices" and even when cooperation includes "trusts", at least apparently according to Judge Posner; however you certainly needent go that far with this argument): "cooperation is better, yielding a more powerful result for less development cost"; this is, after all, the premise of open source collaboration.

</comment><comment><USER22> Yet another reason why the iPhone 5 is the worst iPhone ever produced. Not because it is bad - objectively it is in all ways better than previous iPhones - but because it is comparatively worse than the current state of the art (Galaxy Nexus). Maps are horrible, voice search not as good, no NFC, less radio bands, etc etc.

The iPhone 5 marks the first time in the product line's history that it was not advancing the state of the art.

</comment><comment><USER23> Seems like quite a short-sighted perspective. In the long-run, it will be a great benefit to users to have two companies with billions of dollars to spare competing head-on to build big-data services driven by machine-learning and crowd sourcing, plus AI services, search engines, knowledge bases...

</comment><comment><USER7> It's beyond vindictive at this point, this is a flat out anti-competitive move by Apple.

<comment><USER24> Its true, I'm amazed they are able to get away with it too. Microsoft simply bundled software, but never did it outright prevent competition on its OS. Apples closed garden is outright blocking competition... How is no one looking into this?

<comment><USER25> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish>

Apple has 25% mobile market share. Android has 50%. Microsoft has about 90% desktop market share for over a decade. DirectX was made to kill off OpenGL. C# was made to kill off Java and keep software running on Windows. Microsoft killed of Netscape and a decade later IE6 isn't completely dead.

<http://www.ie6countdown.com/>

Android isn't going away and by my estimate it will always have more market share than iOS.

Btw, Microsoft completely killed of all other PC operating systems when they required PC vendors to pay for shipping DOS, regardless of the OS they actually shipped.

<comment><USER26> C# was made to kill Java as Apple maps were made to Kill Google Maps but they did not prevent Java from being installed, which is what apple is doing. If they want to win by keeping the loyalty of the users they should not cut off all competition but just release a better product than the competition. Apple successed in this in the last years but the more time passes the more I see they are struggling with it, the prefer to kill off any other opportunity, but this will enrage users(at least those who were not brainwashed)

<comment><USER25> That analogy is completely wrong.

When companies write apps in C# for the Microsoft platform, they are going to pretty much stay on the Microsoft platform. Those apps, for the most part, aren't ported to the Mac and Linux (please skip the Mono discussion, it's not a 100% solution). Fortune 500 companies and commercial companies are locking consumers into Windows. Maps is one product. There are thousands of C#, Windows only apps.

<comment><USER27> When companies write apps in Objective-C for the Mac or iOS platforms, they are going to pretty much stay on the Apple platforms. Those apps, for the most part, aren't ported to the Windows and Linux (please skip the GCC discussion, it's not a 100% solution). Fortune 500 companies and commercial companies are locking consumers into Apple. There are thousands of Objective-C, Apple only apps.

<comment><USER25> That's is correct and obvious, so I thought it went without saying. Btw, there are hundreds of thousands of little iOS only apps.

If Apple had a monopoly, or even close to one, in phones then we would have a problem. However, Android leads by a wide margin and since they sell better in the rest of the world, Apple's little walled garden doesn't really matter.

<comment><USER27> My point is that creating a custom language is not necessarily a move intended to create or preserve a monopoly. Microsoft felt that the best way to innovate in the developer space was to produce a modern framework with a core set of modern languages (and to open that framework up for 3rd party integration, such as Delphi). It's unreasonable to expect that Microsoft should be limited to C++ (a non-managed and non-modern language) and Java (a language a competitor controls) for development.

<comment><USER25> Microsoft writes most of its software in C++. They love C++. If C# wasn't the only case then it might be acceptable. DirectX, for example, was done to kill off OpenGL. Microsoft hired away Borland's language team, including the Delphi developer and proceeded to build a better Java that only ran well on Windows, and some might say that they accomplished this. :-)

Objective C was developed before Steve Jobs and he simply adopted it, or his engineers did at NeXT. Personally, I'd like open languages/platforms that offer a little more reuse.

<comment><USER27> > _Microsoft writes most of its software in C++. They love C++._

Microsoft writes most of its _systems-level_ software in C++. Microsoft also writes a lot of C#. WCF and WPF are both built on the .Net stack. Bing runs on ASP.NET. Lots of stuff at Microsoft is build in C#, for the same reasons lots of stuff outside of Microsoft is build in C#: it's modern, safe, fast, and pleasant to work in.

> _If C# wasn't the only case then it might be acceptable. DirectX, for > example, was done to kill off OpenGL._

No, DirectX was written to replace WinG, which is what most games for Windows were written in prior to DirectX. I don't believe OpenGL had any traction on Windows at that time.

> _Microsoft hired away Borland's language team, including the Delphi > developer and proceeded to build a better Java that only ran well on > Windows, and some might say that they accomplished this. :-)_

This might be interesting if Microsoft had hired James Gosling away from Sun to work on C#, but that's not what happened. They hired staff away from Borland, who didn't design Java at all. You're conflating unrelated things.

> _Objective C was developed before Steve Jobs and he simply adopted it, or > his engineers did at NeXT. Personally, I'd like open languages/platforms > that offer a little more reuse._

I fail to see the relevance here. The Objective-C used by Apple today is by no means the same as the Objective-C that NeXT started with. NeXT and Apple extended Objective-C significantly at both the language and the library level. This the the "embrace, extend, extinguish" cycle you accuse Microsoft of.

<comment><USER25> Sorry you fail to see the relevance. Objective-C isn't owned by Apple in any way, shape or form. Of course, they are going to try to improve the language. They sort of have to make it modern since they built their systems around it. Apple's compiler an open source project: <http://clang.llvm.org/> Will Microsoft ever open source their C# compiler? That would be a great boon for making the language cross platform.

<comment><USER27> Objective-C isn't owned by Apple? Who else is using it? Of the few other people who are using it, how many are using it without Apple's extensions? Apple does indeed de facto own Objective-C. They control it. They have embraced it, extended it, and extinguished anyone else who might have had a claim on it.

It's strange too that you have a problem with C# being proprietary, but you don't have a problem with Java being proprietary. Oracle owns both the language and the implementations that everyone uses. That it's part of their business plan to maintain it for Linux does not change its fundamental nature.

And just so you know, Microsoft did open the source for C# under admittedly restrictive terms. Look up Rotor. And they have issued a Community Promise that protects projects like Mono. And yes, Mono counts, just as surely as GCC counts, unless Microsoft also owns C++.

<comment><USER25> Objective-C is an open source project, like the webkit browser. Google adopted webkit for Chrome, for example. There is nothing prevent anyone else from adopting Objective C. Your logic is pretty flawed. Just because Objective C has not gained wide adoption doesn't mean that it's not open to be adopted. Google uses "Java" for Android. Java is open source. You can download the source and build it.

Mono is fine but it's not nearly as good as Microsoft's compiler. C# is a great language. It would be great if Microsoft simply open sourced it.

<comment><USER27> > _There is nothing prevent anyone else from adopting Objective C._

There's nothing preventing anyone else from adopting C# via Mono, is there? Also nothing stopping other companies from improving Mono.

> _Google uses "Java" for Android._

Got them sued, too. I think they were within their rights, but this shows that "openness" is not synonymous with safety.

> _It would be great if Microsoft simply open sourced it._ No arguments from > me. I'd love that as well, though I don't see it happening any time soon.

<comment><USER25> The quality of Mono isn't nearly as good as the alternatives. Why bother using it? Just to say that you aren't locked into Windows with C#?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Elevation Partners Managing Director Roger McNamee on Apple lately:

Apple is "already doing what you'd expect a dumb monopolist to do."

Source: [http://bloom.bg/OXP5Ad#ooid=Q5azF4NTq51l-7YDNIS84TWeSqfF0SQv...](http://bloom.bg/OXP5Ad#ooid=Q5azF4NTq51l-7YDNIS84TWeSqfF0SQv&ootime=02m59s)

</comment><comment><USER29> No. This is not hurting users in the long run. What will hurt is having tens of apps, all having separate voice recognition software. It is correct to have only one. Like it is correct to have only one keyboard. Not tens of different keyborads with every app having his own.

<comment><USER30> Yes, clearly having choice is confusing and anti-user. That is why the internet with multiple places to buy shoes, multiple place to get news, and multiple place to talk about technical topics is so unsuccessful.

<comment><USER29> So how many pair of shoes you wear? Two pairs? Really? One the right size and the others, really big ones over them? Really?

The point was, which you clearly missed - there can not currently be two voice assistanst AT THE SAME TIME in use. Googles thing does not replace Siri. If Google had something to replace Siri and Apple blocked it, then yes, that would be anti.

<comment><USER31> Different shoes have different capabilities. I wouldn't wear hiking shoes to a job interview, but would wear them hiking. Same with apps. Siri might be good at some kinds of voice assistance and Google's offering at others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Because I see this article as the continuation of a discussion about Apple v Google products, here is my macro view of the entire thing:

I honestly don't understand. People act as if Apple is entirely incapable of creating a superior product down the road from Google's. I think that there are obvious competitive advantages to replacing Google's Maps with Apple's Maps in iOS6.

But it seems that everyone just makes the baseline, "duh" assumption that clearly their only possible motive is to screw Google.

Is it not possible that Apple also -actually- believes that version 1 of iOS6 Maps is just the precursor to a product that they will eventually make far superior to Google Maps?? These are not mutually exclusive concepts.

So this hand-wringing about how Apple is screwing users... Call me naive, but I amk completely open to the idea that this is a short-term issue that actually has the possibility to -benefit- users in the long-term, as Apple takes it's lumps and learns what users want in a Maps application, and then eventually deliver things users didn't even know they wanted in a Maps application.

I've really yet to see anyone acknowledge this thought.

edit: You know, I'd at least appreciate a counter-point with the downvotes to my argument. Honestly interested in why I am incorrect. Just saying. _shrugs_

<comment><USER31> Eventual hypothetical superiority in the future doesn't help user experience in the present. Why not allow people to choose which app they want to use?

<comment><USER32> I don't understand your point. Google is free to create a stand-alone version of Maps for the iPhone. They have not done so.

<comment><USER32> >>> "You begin by talking about your macro view of things and all you do is whine and cry about Google Maps when the article is about voice? How can you have a macro view of things and mention a single app? Try and stay on topic at least?"

I am talking about Maps because that is the only thing we have concrete facts on. We have no idea the real reasons the Voice app is not in the App store right now. We simply don't. So I feel it's silly to ascribe motives to something we know nothing about. Obviously, if you have some sort of vendetta against Apple as a company, in a vacuum of information, you will automatically ascribe motives.

I do find it funny that I'm the one "whining" when all I am doing is pointing out is that perhaps the hand-wringing and whining of users about Maps is #1) a touch overwrought and #2 potentially beneficial for users in the long-run. That's all.. And I use the new iOS maps every day and haven't experienced a single problem yet. I'm not saying they don't exist, but living in a large city and using maps to navigate on my bike every day... Nary an issue.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Honda Aircraft Launches HondaJet Elite - <AUTHOR> https://www.flyingmag.com/honda-aircraft-launches-hondajet-elite <comment><USER3> For those curious about the unusual overwing engine pods, Wikipedia says:

"The HondaJet's overwing engine mount configuration was designed to maximize cabin space,[5] and achieve lower wave drag at a high Mach number."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_HA-420_HondaJet#Design](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_HA-420_HondaJet#Design)

The source document has more discussion of the issues involved:

[http://www.hondajet.com/Content/pdf/FlightInternational_Cove...](http://www.hondajet.com/Content/pdf/FlightInternational_CoverStory.pdf)

<comment> cup-of-tea Is it normal to talk about a "high Mach number" for a subsonic aircraft?

<comment><USER4> Yes. At high (sub sonic) speed and high altitude, you get close enough to the speed of sound that this starts to matter a lot.

[https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/35408/what- is-t...](https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/35408/what-is-the- reason-for-changing-the-speed-reference-ias-or-mach-number-with-al)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The price for the new model is around USD $5.25 Million in case you were wondering...

[https://corporatejetinvestor.com/articles/honda-reveals- hond...](https://corporatejetinvestor.com/articles/honda-reveals-hondajet- elite-variant-321/)

<comment><USER6> Oh. So my tiny SaaS company isn't quite there yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't get private jets.

Even if I had Bezos money, I still don't understand why a private jet would ever work out an objectively better experience than flying first class except in very limited circumstances with lots of people.

You'd need to have air crew, storage, fuel, maintenance and I would assume (I know nothing about how this works) a raft of permissions and clearances for every takeoff and landing.

Even if you could easily afford all of the above with your skyscraper-sized cash piles, would it ever be worth the hassle to organize and maintain?

Maybe you have someone handle that for you, but you have to hire them - <USER2> hire someone to hire them. When does it end?

I really don't get the appeal.

<comment><USER8> A private jet allows you to be anywhere you need to be in the world on a whim. And more importantly it allows you to build your commute around your schedule not the other way around first class or not they won't wait for you on the tarmac for 3 hours because a meeting is running late nor will they care if you need to be in Tokyo or not when you try to rebook the tickets and the next flight is completely full. If you can't understand the value of this if you are making Bezos scale decisions then there isn't anything more I can say. Also for Bezos nor for anyone else is it a hassle to manage this by the time you fly on your own jet your personal life is already run as a corporation.

<comment><USER9> This is the crux of it, if you're a senior executive your time is often more valuable than the cost of a private jet. Imagine if Bezos can't get to a shareholder meeting because of a delayed flight, there's millions of dollars at stake on every move he makes.

It's the same reason you might get a house cleaner or gardener in, just on a different scale.

<comment><USER8> >It's the same reason you might get a house cleaner or gardener in, just on a different scale.

While I don't know anyone with a personal Jet I've known a handful of people that essentially grew up with a household staff where they had like 3 to 5 or so people full time supporting the household.

The best explanation for the experience was essentially they had an office manager / executive assistant that they could call on for most things growing up for most of them there was a single point of contact that managed the the staff and they would tell them what they need (I need to buy X, or I need to be in place Y on date Z or I want to have a party for M) and they'll sort it out.

This essentially is needed if you are going to be living in a house "appropriate" to your net worth even starting at a few millions in old money (outside of the US) it comes to a point where you cannot actually manage the house and grounds on your own without it being a full time job and if you actually want to maintain both it's monetary and sentimental value a maintenance staff is nearly mandatory.

Most of us would have trouble keeping up a 2-3 bed apartment running without having a weekly or bi-weekly cleaning service when we work full time, now imagine keeping up an 8-10 bed house with possibly guest quarters and the grounds around it.

This is also one of the reasons that many of these huge houses are not as expensive as one might think as their yearly upkeep cost is pretty darn high.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What's the target market for these kinds of jets?

Millionaire private pilots, who want to sometimes fly their family and friends? Companies needing to fly an executive around?

I don't quite see the practicality of a jet like this, it seems too small and short range to be economical to use in a business setting. Obviously there is a target market because they're making them, butI don't know what it is.

<comment><USER11> Same as Ferraris, except wealthier. No one needs a private jet. A turboprop is much more efficient. This is faster though, and there's a certain cachet to being able to say, "We took my jet."

<comment><USER12> Using a turboprop or a jet (should be) is a result of the specific requirements of a client. If it requires rather short trips on short runways, multiple landings a day and maybe the need to carry some larger items, a turboprop such as the Pilatus PC-12 or a Beech King Air 250 might be a better fit than some private jet. Then again, private jets come in all sorts of variety: if you have rather short runways and short trips, one of the smaller Cessna Citations might be the perfect fit. If you want to travel in comfort across the oceans, an Embraer Legacy or a Gulfstream have no competition from Turboprops at all.

There are different planes for different needs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > The speakerless sound system ... the speakers are integrated into the side > panels.

So NOT speakerless, then?

<comment><USER14> Same as serverless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Being a huge fan of Honda since 10 years this also sparked my interest. Do they develope their own jet engine and if so where can i get my hands on one for my CBR1000rr? :)

Added info: 1,437 nm ~ 2,661 km Engine: Twin GE Honda Aero Engines HF120 turbofans

<comment><USER16> they designed the engine first but since no one chose it, they then decided it build the plane too.

<comment><USER15> I remember a friend who got the Honda Fireblade CBR919RR in 1997. The bike was amazing and i dreamed of it for close to 2 decades before i had my license. 6 years ago i finally got my first superbike, the 919RR.

Let's see when the prices falls on one of these engines made in 2003, who knows, this might also be one of those belated dreams coming through.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Oh cool. This is good news for a lot of us who have been waiting for such a jet.

<comment><USER18> Can't tell if you're being sarcastic but I genuinely have loved this plane ever since I heard of it.

Primarily excited because I'm a huge fan of Honda, secondarily because the price-point, it is fairly affordable for what it is and I can hope to own one by my 50's when the price comes down a bit.

<comment><USER17> I was sarcastic. There is just nothing in this that's interesting in any way for this site unless I didn't see what makes this jet in any way novel. Otherwise we'll have to start posting all press releases for the latest Porsche, Ferrari or Lamborghini.

<comment><USER19> Instead of buying a 2.5 million dollar tear down house in Silicon Valley you rent for $800 a month far away and fly in every day.

<comment><USER20> I'm genuinely asking... what plane can one rent for $800 a month, and that's with payments for ground services aside?

<comment><USER21> I think parent meant "rent a living space" far away cheaply, rather than renting a plane.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> "With a range of 1,427 nm..."

Hm...I'm calling shenanigans.

<comment><USER5> Nautical miles.. it should be capitalized NM.

<comment><USER23> I was momentarily confused by that too. Fortunately, Mr. Brain figured out what they meant, even before coffee.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> It's a sure sign of a bubble when there's a big swing up in bizjets. :)

</comment><comment><USER25> "To continue enjoying the free content made available to you on this website, you must indicate that you understand and accept Bonnier Corp.'s use of cookies by selecting the "Allow all cookies" button below."

If you click the "view details" there's a list of over 500 (!) cookies that you must consent to, with hundreds of companies, and not even an opt-out. Blatantly non compliant with GDPR, can't wait for the first warnings and fines to be served on these types of websites.

<comment><USER26> Oh boy. I suspect "This website isn't GDPR compliant!" will join the ranks of classic Hacker News rant comments like "Piping curl to bash is insecure!", "Why does this website hijack my scrolling / autoplay videos / use 150% of my CPU?", etc.

<comment><USER27> These kinds of small rants play their small part in ensuring that the world stays in equilibrium.

If no one complained, sites would use 800% of the CPU by now, every install procedure would be completely insecure and autoplay would become mandatory. Probably.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I feel like a big part of having a private jet is looking and feeling like a baller and I can't see how that happens with those corny engine pods sitting way above the wings.

<comment><USER29> No, a big part of owning a private jet is to be able to go wherever you want whenever you want.

<comment><USER28> Why not just charter then? Seems like for a $5 million jet, the staffing costs and headaches probably make NetJets much simpler and farther in range.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I don't believe real elites actually use things named elite. That's often something reserved for the more l33t among us.

The Japanese really need to learn how to create better product names.

<comment><USER31> Tell that to Boom!

But seriously, at the price point for this machine, name, branding is not that relevant. They could call it flying basket and if it delivers on TCO, people who use these things will buy them.

<comment><USER32> Maybe whoever worked in the Commodore marketing department sold really expensive things in a past job then?

[http://bash.org/?3763](http://bash.org/?3763)</comment></comment></comment>


Better GPU and 4K screen make the XPS 15 a MacBook Pro for PC users - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/03/dells-new-xps-15-isnt-the-best-at-everything-but-its-not-bad-at-anything/ <comment><USER2> I've been kind of flopping back and forth on whether or not I want to buy a XPS 15. I can max out the specs and get a laptop that I actually want for significantly cheaper than a Macbook Pro. However, even though the build quality is good, I've heard some stories about the XPS 15 breaking down after a year or so, and then... having to deal with the horrors of Dell customer support.

<comment><USER3> Dell support, and I say this having used it for years off and on, is either seamless and painless, or mortal agony. Which you get seems to depend largely on the quality of your last animal sacrifice to the darkest of gods. _Bleating in background_ "Hush goat!"

<comment><USER4> Its not just the support, its the variable quality across products (or updates). I have one of the ~2014 venue 7pros (exact model number escapes me) which came with win8 and I upgraded to win10. I disabled instantgo, and its a fantasic device, the battery lasts for days with my usage patterns, it resumes from standby in a couple seconds/etc. So, when it started having some serious cosmetic issues early this year, so I sprung for a newer one with a slightly newer (and in theory lower power CPU). The new one is a complete POS, the back gets hot, the battery lasts 1/4 as long, it takes literally 10's of seconds to wake-up and get out of the BIOS, the s3 standby options are actually disabled (no bios support), the wifi driver gets stuck. BIOS updates, driver updates, config changes, nothing fixes its load of issues. About the only thing that is better is they swapped the power and windows buttons which on the old one were inconveniently placed.

So, there are reviews of people having similar problems with the older tablet I have until dell fixed it sometime right before I purchased mine. But, good luck convincing dell's tech support that their firmware is a load of crap, and isn't working right. Rather they are like, did it boot, you must have a virus, please reinstall.. I might ask for a replacement but I suspect that won't fix anything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Except there is not a 'pro' level Macbook anymore. There is just emoji-bar / no emoji-bar.

</comment><comment><USER6> I wanted to buy one, but then they didn't release it with Linux as expected! Looks like they want to upgrade you to a Precision instead. Not sure I have a need for a workstation graphics card.

Also, I don't like the 16:9 ratio and glossy screen, sigh.

<comment><USER7> I've been exclusively using Linux (Antergos) on the XPS 15 since mid-February. Installing was remarkably easy, though I haven't had time to mess with the fingerprint reader or GPU switching due to work.

My _only_ complaint is that the glossy screen somehow seems more reflective than my Macbook Pro and iMac--and FWIW I'm typing this with all three machines on my desk right now. However, I'm not too bothered by it. IIRC the 1080p configuration of the 9560 is matte.

<comment><USER8> I may be mistaken but my understanding was that touch panels can't reduce glare as effectively as non-touch because they need oleophobic treatment in addition to anti glare treatment, and this is why MacBooks of all flavors have better glare mitigation than touch-equipped laptops.

<comment><USER6> The irony that is that I don't want touch or glossy but I do want 4k.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> How does Dell manage to get only 2/3 the battery life of the MBP despite having a 25% larger battery and an extra half pound of weight to work with?

<comment><USER10> Probably by optimising for battery life, rather than the specs & price.

A lot of the things that people on HN like about non-macbooks like 32GB of RAM or a real GPU or a 4k screen, all use extra power.

I'm not an Apple fan by any stretch, but these things aren't free from a power perspective, and throwing a larger battery at the problem isn't always enough to make it equivalent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> That's very surprising if the article is correct about it not charging via USB-C. My latitude (basically just an XPS with a different NIC and GPU) does. Dell also have a good line is USB-C docks.

</comment><comment><USER12> PC laptops nowadays have some sorry ass keyboards, this one included. Dells used to have scissor switch keyboards IIRC.

</comment><comment><USER13> Have they worked out the "coil whine" issues that have plagued recent Dell laptops yet?</comment>


The Strangest Desert Festival in the World Makes Everyone's Mad Max Dreams - <AUTHOR> https://jalopnik.com/the-strangest-desert-festival-in-the-world-makes-everyo-1829467474 <comment><USER2> wow I can't think of a thing to say. Just wow.</comment>


Samsung's $2k foldable phone is already breaking - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/04/bendgate-2-0-samsungs-2000-foldable-phone-is-already-breaking <comment><USER2> Why would you _ever_ buy a phone like this? Hell, I can hardly justify paying $200 for a Huawei but I'll admit, the extra RAM does come in handy for a smooth browsing experience.

I think a few weeks ago there was an article on HN discussing these foldable phones. And the argument is that the screen size comes in handy for reading or watching stuff. I myself, I don't see it.

For books, I have a kindle. It cost me like $100 brand new. The native Kindle UI is superior to that of the mobile app.

Movies? Good one. Games? Hahaha.

So, _why?_ Is it a status symbol? Is it the urge to keep up with tech? Someone who has had the phone for a while, please enlighten me/us.

<comment><USER3> Why? Status symbol certainly - with hugely expensive iPhones rather common even amongst oiks, how can you show off how much disposable income you have at dinner parties and on the tube?

Me, I'll stick to a functional and somewhat disposable, £150 phones. Who needs more than a 5 1/2 inch screen and an octocore processor?

<comment><AUTHOR> While I sort of agree in principle an I would probably never pay more than what a regular flagship costs (mostly because I tend to hand on to them for 3+ years), your judgmental tone is off base. I'm sure some do it for status but there's nothing to prop up your generalization. You're judging and insulting people just because their preferences or interests are different from yours. You're on a very technical site, you should understand that some things are also done for a passion for tech. People who have 2000E for a phone can probably show off their "disposable income" in many other ways.

Would you say the same about people who bought the first PCs or Amigas? Because I can assure you HN is full of them and they most definitely didn't do it (mainly) for status.

> Who needs more than a 5 1/2 inch screen and an octocore processor

Who needs more than a 4" screen and a quad core processor?

<comment><USER3> > Who needs more than a 4" screen and a quad core processor?

Not me, but you can't buy them anymore. :(

> you should understand that some things are also done for a passion for tech.

Oh, I agree absolutely. I wasn't intending to refer to those people in my comment. I was observing that hugely expansive devives are routinely and very commonly bought by people with no tech interest whatsoever and used in a way that demonstrates conspicuous consumption. If fact, Apple clearly markets to this group of people.

For those who don't do that (most of those on this site, I expect), I am sorry if anyone was offended. (Incidentally, I _am_ one of those on this site who bought into early Amigas — and earlier 8 bit machines.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> They are just folding it wrong, clearly

<comment><USER5> It's not a bug. It's a feature anomaly.</comment></comment>


Form validation with AngularJS and Rails - <AUTHOR> http://blog.cesarandreu.com/posts/form_validation_with_angularjs_and_rails

<comment><USER2> Coincidentally I wrote almost exactly the same post for Ember today: [http://alexspeller.com/server-side-validations-with-ember- da...](http://alexspeller.com/server-side-validations-with-ember-data-and-ds- errors/)

At the bottom of that post you can see that rendering the errors in rails can actually be much simpler using respond_with

</comment><comment><USER3> It's funny that just today i added "Make activerecord errors visible" to my todos lol, thank you.

-spelling.</comment>


Your Facebook Pokes Are Stored For Two Days. Encryption Keys Then Deleted - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/22/your-facebook-pokes-are-stored-for-two-days-then-their-encryption-keys-are-deleted/ <comment><USER2> Wait, my engineer-sense is tingling. Why are they just deleting the key? If they _really_ couldn't access the Poke after deleting the key, wouldn't they want to save storage costs by deleting the encrypted message contents too?

Unless, of course, the key isn't the only way the message can be decrypted.

<comment><USER3> My engineer-sense says that every item of data written is at risk of being copied into places you wouldn't think to delete them from.

Note that they are not saying they are not deleting the encrypted message contents too. What they are saying simply indicates that what they _promise_ is that they delete the keys.

There are practical reasons to do it this way: You only need to _ensure_ that you delete one key per user (you keep a "current" key, that is anything up to two days old, and a previous key that you delete once it reaches two days), vs. deleting a possibly much larger amount of data entries that might also be more likely to be cached all over the place.

If I were to design a system like that, I'd try to delete the contents, but assume that I'd miss something, and aim to delete the keys too. I'd probably also make at least portion of the key depend on a site-specific set of secret rolling over with time that it should be policy not to log etc. to make it even less likely that the full key would survive longer than it should.

<comment><USER2> Agreed that that's a good reason not to _promise_ to delete the data. However, they don't even say they'll try to delete it, do they?

Of course, "trying" is legally just a terrible way to not promise and still get sued. I get why their lawyers would want them not even mention the data itself.

Still...Facebook is not exactly trusted when it comes to the privacy of just about anything. They're trying to operate a service in the grey area between what they want to do and reality, and doing so depends heavily on people's trust in their intentions. You can guess how much I trust Facebook to keep my data private right now (if not from my timeline, then from the government, etc.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't get the commotion. In light of the analog hole [1], isn't this whole thing with Poke's privacy/encryption just a big pointless media/PR circus?

Unless I misunderstand something here, the other party can store your data indefinitely, and no amount of DRM lockdown can really change that.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_hole>

</comment><comment><USER5> What is Facebook's monetization strategy for a feature that will be used primarily for 15 year olds sending each other naked pics? I can't believe they don't have one.

</comment><comment><USER6> > _is Facebook saving these potentially embarrassing photos and videos? No. > It's deleting them. Pokes are encrypted, and Facebook deletes the encryption > keys two days after they're read so they're unreadable. Key backups are > destroyed within 90 days, making a poke completely inaccessible._

Please could someone with familiarity with English / EU law say if this is legal or not?

<comment><USER7> See my explanation here <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4957817>

It might or might not be legal. But because of laws of physics and mathematics it's impossible for them to do it any other way.

<comment><USER8> _But because of laws of physics and mathematics..._

\-- you mean cost/benefit.

Nothing is impossible, if one is willing to pay the price.

<comment><USER9> That's nonsense. There are plenty of impossible things that people want really really badly.

<comment><USER8> Well, wants are not constrained by physics or mathematics either. So this is a throwaway comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm still a little confused. It seems the "poke" is encrypted, so they encrypt the picture that's sent. But then the encryption key is deleted.

Does that mean the "encrypted photo" is deleted after 2 days, or is the photo's "identification key" (like a hash or ID) deleted after 2 days?

<comment><USER11> They're (explicitly) deleting the key; provided they're not using ancient or horribly broken encryption, the image itself is effectively indistinguishable from gibberish. I'd assume the images themselves get deleted as well, but without a key they're worthless anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Seems somewhat silly, the idea that it's difficult for a company to not store your stuff.

<comment><USER13> Think about availability. A large web site is going to keep replicated copies of data across many geographic locations, plus backed up in long term storage. Those data are stored in hardware that is continually coming in and out of service. It's actually very hard to say with certainty that every copy of a particular piece of data has been deleted.

<comment><USER14> Why should it ever be written to permanent storage?

<comment><USER15> Because RAM is orders of magnitude more expensive than spinning rust, or even SSDs.

<comment><USER14> These are messages that last 20 seconds, there is no time that they will be on disk and not cached to ram anyway.

(edit: well I guess it is 20 seconds after it is received)

<comment><USER15> The messages are stored for two days. Backups for 90…

And: writing to (spinning) disk takes on the order of milliseconds. 20 seconds of RAM storage time (versus milliseconds) means several orders of magnitude larger working set size, which may well be larger than you can afford…

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Wouldn't it be trivial for the recipient to take a screenshot of the private content and therefore retain access to it for years later?

<comment><USER17> App hides the content as soon as you try to take a screenshot and it notifies the sender of your attempt.

<comment><USER18> Like any DRM this is easily defeated. I could run the app in a virtual machine and take the screenshot from the hypervisor or host machine instead. Or I can capture the network traffic. Or I can take a photo of my phone. And so on and so on.

<comment><USER19> The "take a photo of my phone" is the one that non-geeks can easily remember to do. And they will.

<comment><USER20> And I imagine on any phone with a face-facing camera _(would that be "forward facing", or "rear facing"?)_ doing that with another application and a portable makeup mirror should be trivial.

All you need is an application that takes a picture without altering what is on the screen when you press both volume buttons, or something. Maybe even just takes a picture once a second for the next 30 seconds?

You could make an application explicitly for this purpose, and even build in the mirrored image logic. Only one person needs to do it, then every non- technical user can use it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Yeah, _far_ be it from Facebook to use the pictures you post to gather personal data on you.

</comment><comment><USER22> Am I using the same facebook? For me, pokes don't seem to contain any information other than who sent them, who the target is, and when it was sent. I know I've seen pokes older than two days. They stick around for months.

<comment><USER23> Facebook has launched a new image chat service also called Poke. It confuses me too.

"The Poke app for iPhone is a simple and fun way to say hello to your friends. You can send pokes, along with messages, photos and videos, to a friend or multiple friends at once. When you send messages, photos and videos, you can choose how long they'll be available for your friends to view up to 10 seconds. After that, they disappear from the app."

<http://www.facebook.com/help/397568030328686/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> And we believe them... why?</comment>


Why does musl make my Rust code so slow? - <AUTHOR> https://andygrove.io/2020/05/why-musl-extremely-slow/ <comment><USER3> Swap out the allocator [https://users.rust-lang.org/t/optimizing-rust- binaries-obser...](https://users.rust-lang.org/t/optimizing-rust-binaries- observation-of-musl-versus-glibc-and-jemalloc-versus-system-alloc/8499)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! That really does seem to be the issue and I wouldn't have known about this, had I not asked. I will try this out and will update the blog post in ~8 hours time.

<comment><USER4> IME allocations is one of the main things making rust programs slow without diving into the more arcane stuff. So looking into unnecessary allocations and/or the performances of the allocator would be one of the first things to do (right after checking if you're compiling with optimisations).

Given your CPU graphs, and the large number of cores, I expect musl's allocator simply has very poor behaviour with respect to multithreading (e.g. limited or no threadlocal arenas, size-classing, etc…) leading to a lot of crosstalk, extreme contention on allocations, etc...

<comment><USER5> Tbh allocations (and related memory management things) are often the low hanging fruit in big picture optimization in many languages, incl c++.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For those curious, Musl's malloc implementation is currently being re-written for higher performance and robustness, see [https://github.com/richfelker/mallocng- draft](https://github.com/richfelker/mallocng-draft)

<comment><USER7> Do you have any extra readings on the rationale of building their own malloc rather than integrating mimalloc or jemalloc?

<comment><USER6> Not any first hand, but reading their principles suggests that simplicity and ease of deployment are probably relevant. [https://musl.libc.org/about.html](https://musl.libc.org/about.html)

<comment><USER7> Thanks. Taking on malloc and being competitive with much less code (mimalloc is around 6k, and it is the smallest I know that is still competitive) would be a great feat. Would be interesting to follow the development.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> We'd be happy to address specific problems on the mailing list. I believe it's a known issue that the Rust compiler is making really heavy use of rapid allocation/freeing cycles, and would benefit from linking a performance- oriented malloc replacement. Doing so is inherently a tradeoff between many factors including performance, memory overhead, safety against erroneous usage by programs, etc.

One statement in your post, which some readers pointed out was apparently added later, "Others have suggested that the performance problems in musl go deeper than that and that there are fundamental issues with threading in musl, potentially making it unsuitable for my use case," seems wrong unless they just meant that the malloc implementation is not thread-caching/thread-local- arena-based. The threads implementation in musl is the only one I'm aware of that doesn't still have significant bugs in some of the synchronization primitives or in cancellation. It's missing a few optional and somewhat obscure features like priority-ceiling mutexes, and Linux doesn't even admit a fully correct implementation in some regards like interaction of thread priorities with some synchronization primitives, but all the basic functionality is there and was written with extreme attention to correctness, and musl aims to be a very good choice in situations where this matters.

</comment><comment><USER9> ...Not the Intel guy, if anyone else had to pause for a second.

<comment><AUTHOR> I get that a lot!

<comment><USER10> Are you familiar with SwiftOnSecurity on twitter?

Do you have any hobbies that would be out of character for Intel's Andy Grove? I think the world has room for a ficttionalized Andy Grove talking about how to cook french pastries, train bonsai, intermittent fasting, or preparing for a marathon.

<comment><USER11> One SwiftOnSecurity is already too many.

<comment><USER10> It's a free country. You're allowed to be wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Swapping out the allocator for jemalloc would be my first try. It's easy to do and often results in better performance. 30x requires some kind of pathological case though.

<comment><USER13> In a commercial product I worked on I went against the vendors advice to try out jemalloc. It took a 100GB memory hold (that took 48 hours to happen) to staying steady at around 2-4GB and only peaking at 100GB for a few seconds a day.

Same exact code but just swapped out the jemalloc at the command line.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> .. where's the profile output?

</comment><comment><USER15> run a perf trace on both and see what jumps out

<comment><USER16> If he's benchmarking on docker, I'm not sure that perf works in docker.

<comment><USER17> Then benchmark outside docker?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Post was not very illuminating. Very little content. It's pretty much a "if musl is slow, it may be the allocator (eom)" which fits in the headline and would have saved me the click.

</comment><comment><USER19> This actually someone asking and not an investigation and explanation. There isn't even a lot of due diligence to figuring it out - no profiling or resource usage other than CPUs. Also it is musl combined with docker causing a 30x slowdown.

If something is running 30x slower from linking in a different libc, I'm guessing it should not be that difficult to narrow down the cause at least a little bit.

<comment><USER16> Benchmarking in Docker in general is a mistake I believe.

<comment><USER20> Why? The only overhead you have in Docker is on syscalls (due to permission checks, namespaces, ...), everything else runs at 100% native speed - <USER2> assisted virtualization (at least IOMMU overhead plus overhead for anything involving the filesystem) or emulated virtualization (obvious overheads here).

<comment><USER21> If both sides of the comparison run inside Docker that is still a valid comparison. With Docker the benchmark should be a bit more reproducible by anyone.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Doitlive, a tool for live presentations in the terminal - <AUTHOR> https://doitlive.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ <comment><USER2> I've used this before and it works well, but I can only kind-of recommend it.

If you are doing a presentation at some large conference where people will not be interrupting you with questions as you do your presentation, then I would recommend it. HOWEVER most of us do presentations to smaller more informal groups: coworkers, local coding meetups, etc. In those situations people are more likely to interrupt you and ask you something that would normally be doable IF you weren't running a script

So, IF you're going to use this in an interruptable situation I would strongly recommend mentioning BEFORE you start, that you are executing the commands live, but that you're using an interactive script to do it so that you don't screw anything up. Otherwise you look like a fraud when someones like "what about X" and you're all ... "well yes, but i can't do that right now because while it looks like I've been typing these commands, in reality I've been deceiving you and can't break out of this script or everything goes awry... but yes i could do that.... if i wasn't pretending i was actually typing this stuff." And yes, I'm speaking from experience, although i used different words. It's really awkward. Don't do it.

<comment><USER3> It seems to me that this could be improved with a few handy shortcuts.

Because it is actually running your commands in an actual interpreter, executing unplanned commands is only a problem because you can't input it. Having a few keystrokes to go back, edit/enter a command, go to line N, would make this problem disappear.

Or do it the other way, and have a keystroke insert the next line from your script. Like Ctrl-R, but at the speed of my typing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you're having trouble visualizing what this does: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4_UhFloISY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4_UhFloISY)

<comment><USER5> Comment on youtube:

>How does Jordi type commands so quickly?

I did wonder while watching the video if I would have thought the same thing if I wasn't coming from this thread. It was a little too subtle I guess.

<comment><USER6> I've wondered if the gimmick distracts people from the presentation. It's a comfortable way for me to present the talk, but maybe it's not so good for the people following along.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I speak at conferences/developer meetups on a regular basis, and this is intriguing.

I have two primary concerns:

1) When you're doing a live presentation, making the occasional mistake is not only expected, it helps prove that what you're doing is really live. With a tool like this, everything might be TOO perfect. Might have to start incorporating intentional flubs into the script to make things authentic.

2) I haven't tried this out yet, but I wonder what happens when something goes wrong. I've had too many live situations impacted by some unforeseen thing. Forgot to clean up the working directory last time I ran the demo, or who knows what. I'd want to have the ability to take over the controls if needed.

And of course, the antidote to #2 is having very carefully planned repeatable steps with a "cleanup" at the beginning or end to prep for the next time around.

All said, very cool, and I'll be trying this soon.

Edit: Downvotes, really?

<comment><USER8> The problem is while presenting my IQ is 20 points lower. I suppose this holds for many people. There are too many presentations on youtube which spend minutes just fixing typos.

I agree a few seem authentic but soon it just feels like a waste of time — and break in the flow of presentation.

<comment><USER9> I'm not sure about the 20 points number, the effect feels much larger. Perhaps if you simultaneously apply a 20% penalty to hand-eye coordination, balance, facial expressions, typing skills, enunciation, penmanship, memory/recall, creativity, etc. you could accurately represent my skill as a human being while presenting.

<comment><USER10> It's a truth universally acknowledged, that a man in possession of a keyboard is guaranteed to spot spelling errors and trivial errors absolutely last of everyone watching.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wrote one of these hackertypery-presenters a while back:

[https://gist.github.com/bazzargh/a267b97a52f7a1f70c46](https://gist.github.com/bazzargh/a267b97a52f7a1f70c46)

some slight differences; doitlive drives recording for you; I used ttyrec, so you get some more natural typing, like me editing the command line. I set it up so events within 20ms are fired by a single keypress; this makes for quicker typing in the replay while letting you insert natural gaps between commands. NB if your command output is slow, you'll need to type to make it replay, which is a bit weird.

The other thing is, I used this to intersperse the 'demo' portions with slides (the slides were just 'echo some text|figlet' recordings). In order to support multiple files like this, at the end of each recording, you need to press 'return' to move forward; but also, you can press backspace to go back to the start of the current script, or if at the start of a script, backspace again will jump to the start of the previous one.

</comment><comment><USER12> Interesting, but isn't this kind of the opposite of "do it live"? I would think "lip synch" would be a better name for it.

I've done a couple of live presentations in my career (in fact I just did one last Friday). I think they're great for audiences, when the circumstances permit. People connect to the physicality of the typing in a way that looking at some screenshots just doesn't provide.

<comment><USER6> Well, it runs the commands live. With whatever bash environment you have at the moment you run it. And you can type at whatever speed you want, so there is a certain liveness to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This looks like great fun - I speak at conferences, and I can tell you that my next demo is going to involve coding with my elbows, feet, and probably butt.

</comment><comment><USER14> I prefer using asciicinema. It's perfectly OK to use a recording but no need to hide it.

<comment><USER15> I like making recordings too, but they are annoying to update/recreate when the expected output changes.

I found spielbash[1] recently which helps you automate asciinema recordings... though it was a bit broken and I ended up forking it and re-writing most of it [2] and adding a bunch of new features.

There's probably a way to merge the two ideas and have a way to automate live demos as well as have a mode that just spits out a asciinema recording.

[1] [https://github.com/redhat-cip/spielbash](https://github.com/redhat- cip/spielbash) [2] [https://github.com/justinazoff/spielbash](https://github.com/justinazoff/spielbash)

<comment><USER16> Nice! I'm glad you posted.

I forked spielbash in order to add an option that lets it read `cloud-init`[1] YAML as input, and also noticed there were opportunities to improve the original. Will see if I can jump over to your fork.

[1] [http://cloudinit.readthedocs.io/en/latest/](http://cloudinit.readthedocs.io/en/latest/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I am an introvert, like a lot of coders, and having to give a presentation in front of a live audience, and in addition, writing code (or doing demo) at the same time, is a LOT of pressure. It's hard enough to try to remember what I need to say, and my mind would sometimes go blank, sometimes trying to remember what I did wrong when there's unexpected error or forgetting a function name or parameters, etc.

It might also useful for for screencast recording / Youtube tutorial. Bisqwit has his own tool, running on DOS, that does something similar, which mimics him typing code on the editor. ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Da6ZyQJjE0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Da6ZyQJjE0))

<comment><USER18> I really like bisqwit presentations and videos, often mindblowing. However i really dont see the point of scripting typing code. For command-line like here sure why not. But for code there is no point. If I'd much rather see blocks of code copy pasted and explained orally or just going through existing code - maybe several versions more and more complex - with someone explaining it. I don't see the value of some c++ code being typed very fast and accelerated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Very cool indeed. Nit: I think the page can use some cool gifs showing off how the tool is used. Gifs are worth thousand words.

<comment><USER20> Done!

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I saw this a few hours ago and here it is in Emacs:

[https://github.com/narendraj9/dot- emacs/blob/master/packages...](https://github.com/narendraj9/dot- emacs/blob/master/packages/rest/livemacs/)

:)

I haven't implemented the next-position function for shell yet.

</comment><comment><USER22> I have always used [http://man7.org/linux/man- pages/man1/scriptreplay.1.html](http://man7.org/linux/man- pages/man1/scriptreplay.1.html)

How is this different/better?

<comment><USER23> It looks like this one only outputs when you type on the keys - you have direct control over the replay speed, rather than having it play back at the speed you 'recorded' at with scriptreplay.

Reminds me of hackertyper: [http://hackertyper.com/](http://hackertyper.com/)

<comment><USER22> Oh I did always love hackertyper. I suppose I'm convinced.

<comment><USER24> Run `doitlive` with `-s 3` to show off your turbo hacker skills :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Can't not think of that one news anchor yelling "do it live" with a bunch of expletives.

<comment><USER26> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_HyZ5aW76c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_HyZ5aW76c)

<comment><USER27> That was awkward.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> also needs a nod to [https://github.com/rfk/playitagainsam](https://github.com/rfk/playitagainsam) which comes with a javascript player that can be embedded in presentations.

Love the effect with a clickety keyboard ;)

</comment><comment><USER28> I've used [https://github.com/jaspervdj/patat](https://github.com/jaspervdj/patat) for the same purpose in the past. Nice to see there are more options.

</comment><comment><USER29> First thing I wondered was, "How does this compare to asciinema?"

First difference seems to be that do it live allows manual control of progressing through the session where as asciinema doesn't.

What else?

<comment><USER30> asciinema actually records output, this relies on the environment being exactly as it was the first time you ran it. If one command fails or has different output, other things might not work.

This also cannot follow cli sessions. If you open, say, a REPL, you're on your own.

That said, I would love for asciinema to get some "type to progress" capabilities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> nit: i don't think the session files should have the .sh file extension, since they aren't executable shell scripts.

<comment><USER24> They're not? Looks like an executable script to me (in a simple demo script), it's just missing the `#!/bin/bash` header. Might be an idea to add that.

But giving it its own extension might be a good idea either way.

<comment><USER31> it looks like doitlive supports inline python blocks. having these in your session file would causing a parsing error if you tried to run it as an executable script.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Is there any demo (screenshot or video) somewhere?

<comment><USER20> I've added a gif to the docs and the README.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Ha ha this is pretty awesome!

</comment><comment><USER34> In one word: neat.

<comment><USER35> Word quota exceeded. Please correct your message ;).</comment></comment>


Localmind closes funding and is moving to SF - <AUTHOR> http://blog.localmind.com/post/7574018517/localmind-closes-funding-and-is-moving-to-sf TC article here: http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/13/location-based-qa-platform-localmind-raises-600k/ <comment><USER2> I remember these guys from SXSW and I'm happy to see they got some financing.

Localmind is a very cool concept with a lot of potential but it needs thousands of users in every city for the app to be useful. During SXSW, they got precisely that level of density and the omniscience-as-a-service vision became very clear to me.

Intriguingly, because Localmind uses check-in services to passively acquire location data, it doesn't require users to actively use it in order for density to accumulate in the service.

<comment><USER3> Yeah... "world-changing." Don't really see it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Congrats guys! One of the slickest apps for the iPhone.

</comment><comment><USER5> If you're looking for a job, you should definitely check them out. I know Lenny and he's an awesome smart and nice guy. I'm sure the other founders are just as nice.

<comment><USER6> Actually, they're all asses. Sorry Lenny, Beau... The truth has gotta get out. :P

Naw, they're awesome dudes and they'll be missed in Montréal. Who else but Lenny can we put all of out name tags onto by the end of every Startup Drinks ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nice going! I remember getting this app as soon as I got the twitter from @jonosapien that it was hot stuff! Didn't regretted since then!

</comment><comment><USER8> Really happy for you guys :)

</comment><comment><USER9> Wow - that was fast. Kudos all around to these upstanding cybernauts!

</comment><comment><USER10> BOOM! Good stuff, guys!!

</comment><comment><USER11> Imhotep favors you.

</comment><comment><USER12> Congrats Lenny & Team!

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm a fan. Yay Localmind!

</comment><comment><USER14> Congrats. Go Localmind!

</comment><comment><USER15> Congrats guys! :)

</comment><comment><USER16> Well done guys.

</comment><comment><USER17> Woot!</comment>


Ask YC: What are your best SEO resources? - <AUTHOR>

Please post what you have found to be the best resources for SEO. <comment><USER3> <http://www.SeoBook.com> is probably my favorite, great signal to noise ratio.

<http://www.slightlyshadyseo.com> is a less frequent poster, but gives a lot of good gray/black hat stuff that you should at least understand, even if you don't use it.

<http://www.seomoz.com> is the obvious one, although most of thier content is more beginner oriented.

<http://www.sphinn.com> is the digg-style seo site, and tends to have about 10% useful content (IMHO).

</comment><comment><USER4> My best resources are my best competitors :P Just being slightly cheeky here, but in some respects its true. The people who are at the top for the keywords I want to be - you can learn from their sites, how they're built, how they utilise the keywords, who links into them and how its done. This has helped us considerably

<comment><USER5> yeah <http://www.backlinkwatch.com/index.php> is a good way of checking out how your competitors build their rankings

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The following two sites have provided me with several great nuggets of information regarding SEO

<http://www.shoemoney.com/>

<http://www.seomoz.org/blog>

<comment><USER5> the best advice from shoeomoney was not to worry too much about the indepth SEO stuff - 99% of SEO is keyword research, inbound links, title tag, H1 tag, URL ... the rest doesnt really matter if you are building a valuable service rather than trying to spam google in ultra-competitive keyword areas (travel, finance, electronics etc)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't have experience with this myself, but focusing on not sucking seems like the #1 best resource. Perhaps that's slower/too slow though.

<comment><USER8> Take two web sites/services that don't suck. Add SEO to one and watch the difference. It's staggering.

But, in a way-- you're right. One of the most important things about SEO is links-- which requires you to be worth linking to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Most of already posted resources are great for learning seo tricks. And the best one for tracking results of your optimization is <http://www.semonics.com> With this I'm able to track hundreds of keywords.

</comment><comment><USER10> WebmasterWorld.com by a pretty long shot. I even subscribed for a while. It's the only place I know where the more "silent" SEO people actually spill their techniques every now and then. A lot of the other forums tend to be attention seekers who give good tips but they're keeping most of the gold for themselves.

</comment><comment><USER11> A searchable directory of resources serious webmasters need for their day to day web mastering, with emphasis on quality and usefulness. </comment><comment>===== Kyle <http://www.widecircles.co>

</comment><comment><USER12> In addition to the standard ones mentioned below (seobook, seomoz etc) - <USER2> should go check out bluehatseo.com wolf-howl.com stuntdubl.com <http://www.jimboykin.com/index.php>

</comment><comment><USER13> <http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/> is good to watch

you should use this: <http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/>

</comment><comment><USER14> <http://forums.digitalpoint.com> are ok.

Are there any good SEO forums that are free? Or any that are worth paying for?

</comment><comment><USER15> My old boss swore by the guy at seofaststart.com

I read the ebook (free) and it seems straight forward enough.

</comment><comment><USER16> This is good free tool <http://webceo.cbarker.ws/>

</comment><comment><USER17> <http://seologs.com></comment>


Those Brogues - <AUTHOR> http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n19/marina-warner/those-brogues <comment><USER2> I found the article largely incomprehensible, so I'll simply remark that the depicted shoes are bluchers, not brogues.

<comment><USER3> Bluchers/derbies and brogues are orthogonal, e.g.:

brogue derby: [http://leathersoul.com/wp- content/uploads/2010/11/mad1.jpg](http://leathersoul.com/wp- content/uploads/2010/11/mad1.jpg)

brogue oxford: [http://blog.loake.co.uk/wp- content/uploads/2015/02/Buckingha...](http://blog.loake.co.uk/wp- content/uploads/2015/02/Buckingham.jpg)

Those shoes are definitely bluchers and definitely not brogues, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What the hell, was this arduous, tedious article all about?!

</comment><comment><USER5> Not about the videogame ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brogue_%28video_game%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brogue_%28video_game%29))

<comment><USER6> :-(</comment></comment>